


Crystalline

by Centarious



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dimitri in the slums, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Fluff, Healing, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 03:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20900723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Centarious/pseuds/Centarious
Summary: Once, the cold had been a joy to Dimitri, something to admire and bask in. Now, it brought only pain.





	Crystalline

Once, Dimitri had loved the cold.

He had loved its child-like negging as it nipped at his heels and the comfort that came from a hot cup of tea after a day of riding. Loved the pillows of white that blanketed across his home or the crunch of ice beneath his boots. He even loved the bite, the sting and whisper of cold that froze his bones when the wind blew just right. 

But most of all, he had loved the little treasures it brought- the white foxes and baked apples. The thick blankets and warm fires. The snowfalls... endless whiteouts that started with only a flurry of crystalline beauty, breathtaking until it wasn't.

He'd been enamored by it as a child, glued to a window when he wasn't allowed out, tearing up the grounds in chase of the flecks when he was, so fast his father could barely keep up. 

He could still remember his first winter. It had been mild that year, warmer than it had been in decades, and rather than being filled with blizzards, Fhaerghus had been filled with flurries. A gentle fall of white rather than a pounding brigade of them.

Dimitri had been so excited to finally see the snow he'd ran right through his nanny just to get his father. He'd found his step-mother instead, sewing by her window, quiet but not unwelcoming when he'd approached her. She'd decided to take him out herself rather than his nanny and bundled them both up. 

When he'd finally been set loose in the courtyard, he'd gone wild trying to catch the flecks of white, jumping in the air and ripping up fistfuls of grass just to finally get a closer look. Nearly tore up a patch of flowers had Patricia not laid a hand upon his shoulder and stilled him.

Humor had laced her voice, the longing, warm kind as though she'd seen that same moment before._"You must be gentle with the snow," _she'd whispered. Her slender arms wrapped around his stocky little body to guide his palms upwards. _"Careful, quiet, and slow, as if you were approaching a sparrow." _

He'd gone stick straight, still and eager as he watched the snow fall, his step-mother's trembling body a barrier to the biting cold as he halted, cupping the air as if in wait for treasure.

The snowflake that landed on his fingertip then had felt more precious than any gem or fancy circlet he'd ever been shown in his life. More weighted and important than any lesson his teachers had ever taught. 

Dimitri brought his hands up to his face, peering closer at the spectacle before him. He'd been lost in the tiny, starlike designs that twinkled in his palms, glittering like starlight against the sky before it seeped into his skin, its loss a shocking as the cold.

He'd whipped to Patricia, mouth agape in horror. _"I killed it,"_ he cried, eyes wide as he held out his hand to show her, but before he'd had time to rush back inside to save any more fluffy lives, one had landed right upon his eye, settling onto his thick eyelash as though it had every right to be there. 

He'd gone still, stiffer than he'd ever been in his life as he looked to Patricia, mouth clamped tight, so afraid he didn't even let himself blink, didn't even let himself breathe. 

And yet... she had smiled; one of her rare, tight-lipped smiles that crinkled her lavender eyes.

_"You did not kill it, little one," _she said, crouching to his level, _"I promise you." _He'd scowled at that, sure that if the snowflake had disapeared it was dead. _"I can even prove it to you. Look," _she brushed a finger against her eyelash, mirroring where the flake had landed on his, _"when one lands there, it means the goddess has given you a kiss. It's like a little blessing to keep you safe and a promise that she is always watching over you." _

A gentle breath whisked away the flake on his lashes. He watched it drift into her palm.

_"She would never do that if you were a killer, Dimitri."_

Slowly, it disappeared against the pale of her hand, seeping away as though it had never existed in the first place. Fading, like the warmth the cold once brought him. 

The cold brought only pain now- in numb fingers frozen into claws, boots, torn up and soggy from drifts, and bodies, gangly and aching. And as Dimitri wandered the streets, empty and alone, he could not remember how he had ever thought of the winter as a comforting thing.

He'd lost track of the exact amount of time he'd been in the slums. Lost track of the exact date Dedue had sacrificed himself for Dimitri's pointless freedom. Lost track of the date he had left Fhirdiad for another town. Another village. Another street. 

But he'd known how many winters. He'd known how many blizzards that tore through his body year after year and how many breaths he went without food. He'd known how many little corpses he found curled in alleyways, frozen to the bone.

Even in the presence of hundreds of suffering, the dead still remained his only company.

Sometimes they whispered to him, the bodies he found, soft, childish voices that questioned in low tones how Dimitri could have been so blind to his own people's plights. He a prince who had abandoned them among so many others. 

What kind of man was he? What kind of man was he to have never known the true extent of the brutality these people faced, just under his own nose until he himself had fallen within, starving with them, breaking molded bread, and breathing in that same rotting stench of despair. 

He was a monster, one covered in matted fur and ripe with disease- illness festering upon him like magots the rotten meat the townsfolk threw to the dogs. Rotten meat he'd ripped from their maws like an animal himself if only to ease the pain in his stomach. 

Was it not his animalistic tendencies that brought him to the state he was in now? Collapsed in an alleyway and curled in like a corpse as the bitter chill tore through his body, Dimitri could think of no other answer. 

He hadn't even the strength to move his fingers now. They'd long since been reduced to nothing but curled claws from the cold. All he could do was hope to save them from frostbite for another night until the illness faded. If it ever did.

Hunger and a lack of protection from the cold had made Dimitri weak. A sudden outbreak of disease in the slums he'd haunted to watch imperial movement had been his death-blow. 

The only thing he'd gotten from those soldiers had been a broken rib and blood on his hands. But it was no matter now. 

The pain of the rib had mingled together with the ache in his chest, the pop and tear that ripped through his lungs when he took each labored breath, iron tanging his tongue. He'd managed the illness the week prior. He'd even been able to steal some food from a vendor uptown and gathered enough strength to search for a healer. Maybe even a priest who pitied the poor but it had been a blind hope.

Most, if not all of them, had been relocated. Sent off to assist their war front or help the church. Whichever faction that had claimed them first. 

Still, even one victory in hopes of having his strength return and heal his illness was something, even if the ghosts hissed that he could have done more. That he should not have been so foolish as to rest and relax.

The goddess told him as much when she'd struck him with a fever only days later. 

He'd lasted barely a day before he'd staggered into an alleyway. Like an animal, he collapsed into the corner of two buildings, right in the snow, curled up and trembling as he watched the brick and mortar sway like a mirage. Watched until even that became too painful.

Groaning, a raspy, wet sound he rolled onto his back, spine aching with each breath and each bone that settled into its new position. Goddess only knew how long he had been on his side. It could have been only minutes. A breath of time as he drifted. Or it could have been a day. 

Would it be another day until he could stand? Till he could breathe again?

Bleary eyes gazed to the sky, flurriless for the first time in days, but he could smell a storm. Could smell a blizzard coming and soon. He wondered if he would be buried under the drift. Lost to a sea of white, something he once found comforting and joyous, now suffocating and bitter.

A prickly cough ripped through his body, the sound reduced to only a horrid wheeze and retch before he spat to the side. Spat and looked with resignation. 

Snow stained red. Crimson like a flower. Sharp as a sword.

And he turned away. 

They no longer whispered to him, his family. They hissed but he had long been unable to hear them. No matter how hard he tried to listen to their pleas, their desperate cries for revenge, he heard only muffles, like screams underwater. 

And of all the things he had faced, the hunger, the pain, the illness, it was the silence that scared him the most. 

It was the silence that made him look back to the sky and wonder that if he'd even had the strength to cry out, would he even be heard? Would he be saved by some miracle he did not deserve or would he be nothing but a muffle? A scream underwater. Another corpse curled in an alleyway.

As the fever took hold of him again, sent him sweating in the cold and blinking against the mirage of his mind, he prayed. Prayed to the goddess that had failed him and so many others that he be able to fulfill at least one promise. That he could survive, if only long enough to do justice to the family he had lost.

And as he felt his consciousness begin to dip into something gray and thoughtless, he watched bleary and tired a single snowflake fall from the sky and land just upon his eyelash. 

Dimitri pressed against the railing of the balcony, the bitter chill of morning clawing through his shirt. Another snowfall, just as early as the last, he mused, looking out across the pillowy expanse of the estate. The snow glittered in Fhirdiad. Like crystals and starlight, it surfed across the surface of each drift like its own little language. 

It was a lonely sight some days, the great expanse of white against a blue sky. A blank canvas his father once said. A clean slate once Dimitri would rise to the throne. If only he hadn't drenched it in blood. 

If only he hadn't done all he had.

A clouded breath slipped from his lips.

It was a lonely sight some days, indeed, the ones when the cold was too familiar and the nights too restless. 

But, others... it was comforting. A warm thought and a pretty background he ached to ride through. To kick up snow like dust and gallop till the twilight turned that white blanket orange and bright as a torch. 

His fingers laced together. Today would be a little bit of both, he figured.

But that was okay.

Slowly, he was understanding that it was okay to not be... completely okay. Maybe it was pitiful of him to have found such relief in a concept, but nonetheless, he had. Nonetheless, it had made countless days easier to bear.

He startled as a heavy warmth settled around his shoulders, tearing him out of his mind. His panic eased at the feeling of a familiar little body carding against his own, shivering like a leaf. 

Dimitri smiled softly, albeit a bit apologetically as he readjusted his cloak to envelope Byleth, swallowing her whole. "Did I wake you, beloved?"

She shook her head gently, fingers curling around his own from behind the fabric. "Only the cold."

He chortled slightly, leaning down to press a kiss on her mop of mint hair, matted and tangled from sleep. He'd brush it for her later. "You shouldn't have come out here then, it's no better." Yet to be adjusted, he wasn't surprised it woke her. Her first full winter in Faerghus would be a hard one, but she hadn't complained.

"It's much better out here," she said, snuggling in against his body. "You kingdom bred people give off so much warmth. You most of all." She tilted her head back, green eyes glinting in the morning light. Her brows quirked in slight worry. "You aren't sick are you?"

"Thankfully not." He looked down to see she was still in her nightgown. It was a gift Hilda had gotten her for their engagement. To say it was... unfitting of the weather was an understatement. "But, you will be if you don't get back inside." A soft smile curled her lips, that smile she only gave to him. "Come," his voice was lighter now, easier when she looked at him like that, "I'll lay with you until you're all warm."

She titled her head further back. "Beware," she warned, "it may take a while."

Chortling, he caught her chin and leaned over, smiling fondly at his wife. "Good," he uttered, pressing his lips to hers. 

And when they had returned to their rooms, balcony doors shut tight, extra blankets secured and Byleth nestled on Dimitri's chest, he'd watched in quiet awe as she propped herself up to lay a single, lingering kiss against his eyelash. 


End file.
